July Seventh: day of victory!

Tokyo, 7/7/08, 5:50 am
Why so early you ask? Two reasons: I am still under the influence of jet lag, and I need to officially wake up in an hour so this gives me time to write to you all. This post chronicles the happenings of July 6th.
I finally met my housemate at breakfast. He is a Taiwanese boy named Weiyu, a rising college junior whose Japanese skills can only be described as “beast.” I would say this is a fair assessment, as he has two years of college level Japanese behind him as well as one of these summer courses from last year. (Mom: I made a mistake. He is not from H-vard; another boy was, but I missed him by a week). I learned a huge lesson from Weiyu: bring presents of food if possible. He had brought literally boxes of sweets and dried mangos and who knows what else to ingratiate himself with the family: it sure worked on me!
Okay, so moving along. Weiyu, Daisuke and I prophylactically did the commute from home to school so that today I wouldn’t get lost. From the train station it is very easy; one line change for a total of 40 minutes train time. It is the biking from the house to the train-station that proves difficult. Before I describe this, some observations: 1) People in Japan love bikes; 2) Tokyo has ridiculously narrow streets everywhere. 3) Unlike in the Chinese cities of this magnitude that I have visited that are like this, Tokyo is improbably clean and orderly despite these two otherwise crippling characteristics. However, what happens as a result of these very narrow streets is that the five minute bike ride is simply a maze. The actual directions I catalogued while following daisuke, committed to memory, then wrote down afterwards are: RRLRLRCXLR (C for curve, X for major street crossing). While I have the turns down, I am sure that I will be lost many times before I get my commute straight. Another interesting thing about bikes here: no gears; just you, the handle bars, and a lot of faith in flatness.
Weiyu left us after we had seen the school to go meet up with an Italian friend, leaving Daisuke and I to go where else: a chiropractor! Oh, ye of little faith, but wait! This was no ordinary chiropractor, and this was no ordinary chiropractic appointment! This chiropractor, as was explained to me later, was very famous, and held master classes for other chiropractors and their students once a month. So, imagine: one master chiropractor, 5 observing chiropractors, and 15 people watching, each waiting for his or her 30 seconds with the man himself. The sound of cracking necks and snapping body parts will stay with me for some time. It was quite entertaining to watch, actually. At one point, he tied a long narrow strip from a patient’s neck and another from the chin. He tied these together from each side, tied the sides together, pulled gently a couple of times to make sure the knot was good, and then yanked the patient 2 inches across the bed by the neck! At this point I felt deep respect for the master and mild terror for the patient.
After Daisuke was bent, twirled, yanked, and pressed, we headed out of the chiropractic finishing school and back home. On the way, I learned several things: 1) Calpico Water (soft drink) just tastes better purchased in Japan! 2) For things like drinks, drug stores are cheaper than vending machines which are cheaper than convenience stores, and cans are cheaper than plastic bottles (Petoboteru), though somehow both cans and bottles carry the same 500 ml. hmm.
A note on language learning. Daisuke and I spoke mostly in Japanese, and he really did a wonderful job being patient and repeating things for me, over and over and over, and I really feel like I am getting somewhere from day 1. Mika speaks much more English to me, likely because her goal in life seems to be to raise Miu bilingual. It is difficult to get my ideas across in Japanese as it is; it is nice on occasion to have some outlet for conversation outside of the survival level.

Tokyo, 5:00 pm, 7/7/08
If any of you are interested in what I had for dinner last night, I had this omelet sort-of dish where raw eggs are mixed into cabbage, then cooked on a hot-pan; tasty, if mildly breakfast-ish by American standards.
I had orientation today at school. It started with a placement test; I did the best that I could, though the grammar went beyond me very quickly. Then I had an interview with a teacher. A single word I learned with Daisuke on our Tokyo adventure saved me: if (moshi もし). This simple word meant I understood that all the scenarios were scenarios: anyone who has done conversation drills can understand the importance to meaning that this can have. We find out tomorrow what class level we are in.